Benghazi report: Systematic failures

An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management failures at the State Department led to inadequate security that left the diplomatic mission vulnerable.

Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual American officials ignored or violated their duties and found no cause for any disciplinary action. The board found that contrary to initial reports, there was no protest outside the mission and blamed the incident entirely on terrorists.

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The State Department sent a classified version of the report to lawmakers Tuesday and released an unclassified version later Tuesday. The report makes 29 recommendations to improve embassy security. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she accepted them all.

Diplomats and intelligence officers alike have spoken about the rising risk in Benghazi and growing debate over how to improve security before the attack, set against Ambassadors Chris Stevens’ decision to keep the Benghazi diplomatic post open and even visit there on Sept. 11.

Late that evening, militants overran the lightly defended U.S. Consulate, setting fire to it and ultimately killing Stevens and information specialist Sean Smith. Militants later fired mortars at the CIA safe house where survivors had taken refuge, killing Americans Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs working for the CIA who had come to help rescue the diplomats.

Retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen led the independent review, studying cables, video and intelligence and interviewing some survivors. Their review will also include their recommendations on how to keep it from happening again.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was to have appeared at Thursday’s hearing but cancelled after fainting and sustaining a concussion last week while recovering from a stomach virus that dehydrated her. Clinton is under doctors’ orders to rest.

The secretary of state is required by law to convene an Accountability Review Board when U.S. officials are killed overseas in the line of duty. The secretary is not, however, required to make its findings public or send classified details to lawmakers. Still, Clinton has pledged to share as much detail as possible.

ARB inquiries are designed to look at security procedures before and during the incidents in question, and make recommendations on how they can be prevented in the future. Previous boards, notably the ones established after the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, have found broad fault across all branches of government, including Congress, but have not targeted individuals for blame.

The Benghazi incident became politically heated in the last weeks of the tight presidential campaign, with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice criticized for saying in television interviews that the attack was part of a protest over an anti-Islamic film that had started in Cairo earlier that day. Her comments came days after the administration had intelligence pointing to a militant attack. The political fallout is not within the review board’s mandate and its report is not expected to mention the controversy, except possibly in passing.

But the incident also sparked debate on the larger question of how U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers can do their jobs in unstable environments, as al-Qaida spreads across Africa, without also expanding their security. Diplomats have said that overreacting to the attack could produce what some are calling a “Benghazi effect” that would wall them off from the people they are supposed to be engaged with.

Though called a consulate, the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi was so small it was only lightly staffed by a skeleton crew of diplomats and guarded by a local Libyan force. Its small size was partly because there was not yet much diplomacy to do in a city still rebuilding after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi, but also because the consulate’s role was in part to provide cover for the larger intelligence gathering mission in the region.

Most of the roughly two dozen Americans based in Benghazi worked for the CIA, some helping the State Department track and buy up the tens of thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile systems known as MANPADS (man-portable-air-defense-systems) that have made their way from Qadhafi’s arsenal to the open market, trying to keep them out of the hands of Al Qaeda sympathizers throughout the region. That work included developing a network of tipsters in the port city who would watch for weapons shipments headed out of the country.